MOTION STATUES REPRESENTING VICTORS IN VARIOUS CONTESTS.
We shall now review the types of victor statues, which reproduced in their pose the various contests, i. e., statues in motion. We shall find it convenient to follow in the main the order of contests as they appear on the Oxyrhynchus Papyrus[1376]—the stade-race (στάδιον), double race (δίαυλος), long race (δόλιχος), pentathlon (πένταθλον), wrestling, (πάλη), boxing (πύξ), pankration (παγκράτιον), hoplite-race (ὁπλίτης), chariot-race (τέθριππον), and horse-race (κέλης)—except that we shall class the four running races (nos. 1, 2, 3, and 11) together and include the three boys’ contests (παίδων στάδιον, πάλη, πύξ, nos. 8, 9, 10) under the corresponding men’s events. The classification of competitors by ages (ἡλικίαι), which varied at different festivals, will need a word of explanation. While athletes at Nemea, the Isthmus, and Delphi were divided into three classes, παῖδες, ἀγένειοι, and ἄνδρες,[1377] at Olympia they were divided into two, παῖδες and ἄνδρες.[1378] At local competitions there was a more elaborate classification. Thus at the Bœotian Erotidia, boys were divided into younger and older;[1379] at the games held on the island of Chios there were five divisions, boys, younger, middle, and older ephebes, and men;[1380] and at the Athenian Theseia, the boys were divided into first, second, and third classes, while an open contest also existed for boys of any age.[1381] Girls at the Heraia at Olympia were similarly divided into three classes.[1382] Plato proposed three classes of athletes in his Laws—παιδικοί, ἄνδρες, and a third class, ἀγένειοι, between boys and men.[1383] The classification of athletes at Athens into παῖδες and ἄνδρες, adopted by Boeckh, Dittenberger, and Dumont,[1384] is now the one generally followed. According to it the παῖδες were subdivided into three classes, those τῆς πρώτης ἡλικίας, τῆς δευτέρας, and τῆς τρίτης; and so the ἀγένειοι were merely the παῖδες της τρίτης ἡλικίας. The boys, including the ἀγένειοι, ranged from 12 to 18 years old; at 18 they became ἔφηβοι or ἄνδρες.[1385] We have already seen that the age of boy victors at Olympia was over 17 and under 20.[1386]
As we have already remarked in an earlier chapter, we are mostly indebted to Pausanias for our knowledge of the victor statues at Olympia.[1387] He mentions in his periegesis of the Altis 192 monuments, which were erected to 187 victors.[1388] Some of these victors won in more than one contest, so that there are 258 different victories recorded in all. In the following sections we shall see how these were distributed among the various contests.
Runners: Stadiodromoi, Diaulodromoi, Dolichodromoi.
Running races formed at all times a part of the Greek games and of the exercises of the youth in the gymnasia and palæstræ. A scholiast on Pindar[1389] says that the running race had its origin in the first celebration of the Eleusinian mysteries. It figures largely in mythology, especially at Olympia, which also shows its antiquity.[1390] In historic times many varieties of running developed, but four chief ones were practised at the great games.[1391] First there was the simple stade-race (στάδιον, δρόμος), which was merely the length of the stadion or 600 Greek feet, corresponding with the running race of Homer.[1392] Then there was the double race (δίαυλος), twice as long as the preceding, to the end of the course and back again.[1393] The long race (δόλιχος, ὁ μακρὸς δρόμος), which Philostratos derives from the institution of messenger runners (hemerodromoi),[1394] is variously given as seven, twelve, fourteen, twenty, and twenty-four stades in length, i. e., from about four-fifths of a mile to nearly three miles.[1395] Lastly there was the race in armor (ὁπλιτοδρόμος,[1396] ὁπλίτης,[1397] ἀσπίς.[1398]) The long race was instituted not so much as a contest of fleetness as of endurance. At Olympia only men were admitted, though there was such a race for boys at Delphi.[1399] The Cretans were famed in this style of running.[1400] The race in armor, which was a double race or two stades at Olympia, we shall discuss further on. Probably the boys’ stade-race at Olympia was shorter than that of the men. Plato, who gives the historic division of running races outlined above, has the boys run one-half of the men’s course and the ephebes (ἀγένειοι) two-thirds.[1401] Just so Pausanias has the girl runners at the Olympia Heraia run one-sixth of the men’s stadion.[1402]
At Olympia, as at the Panathenaia in Athens and probably elsewhere, the first event preceding all others was the stade-race. Pausanias says that it was the oldest event at Olympia,[1403] and it existed there all through antiquity from the first recorded Olympiad ( = 776 B. C.), when Koroibos of Elis won.[1404] But the notion generally held[1405] that the stade-race for men was honored above all other events at Olympia, because the winner became ἐπώνυμος for the Olympiad and because his name occurs in the lists of Africanus for every Olympiad, is incorrect. In two passages Thukydides cites Olympic pancratiasts for dates,[1406] and in the earliest inscription which makes use of Olympiads for chronology the later introduced pankration is the event used.[1407] The literary supremacy of Athens, where, at the Panathenaia, the stade-race was the most important event, doubtless helped later in making the stade runner at Olympia eponymous. This custom, however, was not generally employed before the third century B. C.
Fig. 36.—Athletic Scenes from a Bacchic Amphora in Rome. A. Stadiodromoi and Leaper. B. Diskobolos and Akontistai.
Fig. 37.—Athletic Scenes from a Sixth-century B. C. Panathenaic Amphora. Stadiodromoi (left) and Dolichodromoi (right).
Pausanias dates the introduction of the double foot-race at Olympia in Ol. 14 ( = 724 B. C.).[1408] He does not say when the long race was instituted, but Eusebios says that it was in Ol. 15 ( = 720 B. C.).[1409] The boys’ stade-race was introduced there in Ol. 37 ( = 632 B. C.).[1410] The hoplite-race was inaugurated at the end of the sixth century B. C., in Ol. 65 ( = 520 B. C.).[1411] Pausanias mentions 24 stadiodromoi at Olympia, who won 32 victories, which makes this event third in importance, next after boxing and wrestling. He mentions 7 victors in the double race with 11 victories, and 5 victors in the long race with 8 victories. He also mentions 12 hoplite victors with 14 victories. Consequently, in all four running events there, he records 48 victors with 65 victories, which brings the running races only to second place in importance at Olympia, ranking next after boxing.[1412] The ordinary sprinter or stadiodromos, and the double sprinter, diaulodromos or hoplitodromos, naturally ran differently from the endurance runner or dolichodromos. Panathenaic vases clearly show this difference. Thus while the sprinter swung his arms violently, spreading the fingers apart and touching the ground only with his toes[1413] (Figs. 36A and 37, left), the endurance runner, who had to conserve his strength to the last, ran with a long stride, holding his arms bent at the elbow and close to the body, his fists doubled and his body slightly bent forward, its weight resting on the ball of the foot, the heel being raised only a little. Thus Philostratos says that the dolichodromoi ran with their hands extended and with their fists balled, but that at the finish they also swung their arms violently like wings.[1414] The race (showing balled fists) is seen on a Panathenaic amphora dating from the archonship of Nikeratos (333 B. C.), now in the British Museum, and on another of the sixth century B. C., pictured in Fig. [37] (right).[1415] In the diaulos the movement was less violent. Thus on an Athens vase inscribed, “I am a diaulos runner,”[1416] the movement is between that of a sprinter and an endurance runner. It seems probable that this difference in the style of running was similarly shown in sculpture.[1417] We shall next consider certain sculptural monuments which represent runners.
The typical scheme for archaic and archaistic art was to represent the runner with one knee nearly touching the ground, the upper log forming a right angle with the lower, the other leg being perpendicular to the upper. This scheme appears on many vases and reliefs and in statuettes and statues.[1418] This old method of depicting runners was kept up by vase-painters down to the time of the red-figured masters.[1419] We see them on many reliefs, e. g., on the Ionic-Greek reliefs on the three archaic bronze tripods of the middle of the sixth century B. C. in the possession of Mr. James Loeb;[1420] on a small bronze relief in the Metropolitan Museum in New York which represents a winged Boreas;[1421] and on the marble funerary stele of the so-called dying hoplite runner found in 1902 near the Theseion, and now in the National Museum in Athens.[1422] Almost the same position as that of the figure on this Athenian relief is seen in a small bronze in the Metropolitan Museum, whose primitive features and solidly massed hair date it in the early part of the sixth century B. C.[1423] Another slightly larger bronze in the same museum represents Herakles running in a kneeling posture.[1424] Because a spearman is incongruous behind a bowman, Kalkmann[1425] and Furtwaengler[1426] have interpreted the two kneeling figures near either end of the West gable of the temple on Aegina as archaic runners (see Fig. [21], left). We may further compare with these figures the positions, though not the motives, of two others from the West gable at Olympia,[1427] as well as that of the kneeling bowman Herakles from the East gable of the temple on Aegina.[1428] In this connection we shall also mention the life-size marble torso of a kneeling youth found in Nero’s villa at Subiaco in 1884 and now in the Museo delle Terme, Rome (Pl. [24]).[1429] This statue, representing a boy of delicate build apparently striding forward with the right leg and bending the left so that the knee nearly touches the ground, has been regarded by some scholars[1430] as a runner, whose pose copies the archaic manner, being historically the last example known of its use in sculpture. The right shoulder is turned backward and the head, now missing, was turned back and upwards; the right arm is raised high and twisted about with the palm of the hand facing backward, the left arm extended with its hand in some way related to the right knee. The impression made on the spectator is that of a boy bending aside as if to ward off some danger. It is an excellent piece of work, evidently the marble copy of an original bronze. This has been variously assigned to the fifth, fourth, and even later centuries B. C.,[1431] and interpreted in various ways[1432]—as a Niobid,[1433] as Ganymedes swooped down upon by the eagle,[1434] as Hylas drawn into the water by nymphs when he was filling his pitcher,[1435] as a ball-player,[1436] as a boy throwing a lasso,[1437] as a gable figure,[1438] as a runner at the games, etc. Many of these interpretations are purely fanciful; the last is, perhaps, as good as any, though the strongly turned upper body seems not quite fitted to it. If it represents a runner, the sculptor has reproduced the well-known archaic pose.
The Statue of the Runner Ladas.
We shall next consider the famous statue of the runner Ladas by Myron, which is unfortunately known to us only from literary evidence, but which attained in antiquity an even greater fame than his nameless Diskobolos, since it portrayed even more tension than that wonderful work. Its fame was partly due to the picturesque story how the victory cost the runner his life, for he died of strain while on his way home to Sparta; it was also due in no less degree to the striking way in which the victor was depicted.[1439]
Two fourth-century epigrams tell us of the statue. The first of these runs:
Λάδας τὸ στάδιον εἴθ’ ἥλατο, εἴτε διέπτη,
οὐδὲ φράσαι δυνατόν· δαιμόνιον τὸ τάχος.
[ὁ ψόφος ἦν ὕσπληγγος ἐν οὔασι, καὶ στεφανοῦτο
Λάδας καὶ κάμνων δάκτυλον οὐ προέβη.][1440]
The second epigram, naming Myron as the sculptor, runs:
Οἷος ἔης φεύγων τὸν ὑπήνεμον, ἔμπνοε Λάδα,
Θῦμον, ἐπ’ ἀκροτάτῳ πνεύματι θεὶς ὄνυχα,
τοῖον ἐχάλκευσέν σε Μύρων, ἐπὶ παντὶ χαράξας
σώματι Πισαίου προσδοκίην στεφάνου.
PLATE 24
Statue of a Kneeling Youth, from Subiaco. Museo delle Terme, Rome.
To these verses are added the following, which Benndorf thinks belonged to another epigram on the same statue:
πλήρης ἐλπίδος ἐστίν, ἄκροις δ’ ἐπὶ χείλεσιν ἆσθμα
ἐμφαίνει κοίλων ἔνδοθεν ἐκ λαγόνων.
πηδήσει τάχα χαλκὸς ἐπὶ στέφος, οὐδὲ καθέξει
ἁ βάσις· ὢ τέχνη πνεύματος ὠκυτέρα.[1441]
Professor Ernest Gardner translates the two parts of the second epigram as follows:
“Like as thou wast in life, Ladas, breathing forth thy panting soul,[1442] on tip-toe, with every sinew at full strain, such hath Myron wrought thee in bronze, stamping on thy whole body thy eagerness for the victor’s crown of Pisa.”
“He is filled with hope, and you may see the breath caught on his lips from deep within his flanks; surely the bronze will leave its pedestal and leap to the crown. Such art is swifter than the wind.”[1443]
Even if part of the epigram is rhetorical, we can not doubt that Ladas was represented in the final spurt just before he arrived at the goal. His eagerness was not confined to the face—though the panting breath could have been indicated by half opened lips, but was visible in the whole body.[1444] Whereas the girl runner of the Vatican (Pl. [2]) is represented at the beginning of the race, Myron’s statue represented Ladas at the end of it. Probably the victor was represented with his weight thrown on the advanced foot and with the arms close to the sides and bent at the elbows—a treatment which would have been easy for the sculptor of the Diskobolos. Mahler tried to identify the statue with one of the Naples group of so-called runners (Fig. [51]).[1445] However, as we shall see, these probably represent wrestlers, and not runners, and neither of them shows any such tension as we should expect from the description of the statue of Ladas. Though Foerster believes that the statue of Ladas stood in Olympia, in honor of his victory in the long race there,[1446] we can not say definitely where it was.[1447]
| Fig. 38.—Statue of a Runner. Palazzo dei Conservatori, Rome. | Fig. 39.—Statue of a Runner. Palazzo dei Conservatori, Rome. |
Perhaps our best representation of runners is to be seen in the two marble statues discovered near Velletri and now in the Palazzo dei Conservatori, Rome (Figs. 38 and 39).[1448] The hair and the sharp edges of the modeling of the flesh, as well as the tree-stumps near the right legs, show that these statues are copies of bronze originals. They were at first interpreted as runners, but later were regarded as forming a group of wrestlers, who were standing opposite one another and holding their hands out for an opening. However, there is nothing in the pose or the expression of these statues to show the tension of two opponents. Moreover, they certainly never formed a group, for stylistic differences reveal that they are copies of statues by different artists who lived at different times; one belongs to the severe style of the last quarter of the fifth century,[1449] while the other, with its softer forms, smaller head, and deeper-set eyes, is a product of the fourth century B. C.[1450] The prominent edge of the chest is doubtless meant to indicate the hard breathing of a runner.[1451] Just in front of the tree-stump on the older statue is to be seen a round hole in the plinth, which may have been made for the end of a club held in the right hand, as such an object is found in other works of art, notably in a statuette from Palermo, which is the copy of a fifth-century B. C. original, and on a second-century B. C. grave-stele from Crete.[1452] Its use, however, is not certainly known.
Furtwaengler, by an ingenious process of reasoning, argued that he had recovered an actual statue of an Olympic runner in the so-called Alkibiades, formerly in the Villa Mattei, but now in the Sala della Biga of the Vatican.[1453] This torso he ascribed to the sculptor Kresilas, because of its likeness to the Perikles of that master, which once stood on the Akropolis,[1454] and to a marble torso in Naples representing a wounded man ready to fall, which he thinks is a copy of the Volneratus deficiens of Kresilas mentioned by Pliny.[1455] The Alkibiades is very similar to the Naples gladiator, though later in date; the bearded head, drawn-in stomach, and muscular chest, and the veins in the upper arm are common to both. The restorer of the Vatican statue has placed a helmet under the right foot. But the deep-breathing chest may indicate a runner, as we saw in the case of the statues of the Conservatori just discussed. Furtwaengler has the body bend further forward, so that the right foot may rest upon the ground and the glance be fixed upon the goal, with the arms extended at the elbows, a position proved for the right arm, at least, by the puntello above the hip. As the head shows portrait-like features and only those athletes who had won three victories had portrait statues, he has identified the original of the Alkibiades with the statue of the famous stade-runner Krison of Himera, who won his victories at Olympia just after the middle of the fifth century B. C., the approximate date of the Vatican copy.[1456] Such an identification appears, however, to be too far-fetched to be convincing.
Statues of Boy Runners.
Fig. 40.—Statue of the Thorn-puller (Spinario). Palazzo dei Conservatori, Rome.
Probably the statues of boy runners did not differ essentially from those of men. That they were sometimes represented in motion is shown by the footprints on the recovered base of the statue of Sosikrates by an unknown artist. Here the right foot touched the ground only with the front portion.[1457] The view has often been expressed that the bronze statue in the Palazzo dei Conservatori, Rome, known as the Spinario (Thorn-puller) portrays a runner (Fig. [40]).[1458] It represents a boy, from twelve to fifteen years old, seated upon a rock bending over and engrossed in extracting a thorn from his left foot, which rests upon the right knee. The severe hair treatment, low forehead, full cheeks, and strong chin appear to show the ideal beauty of a boy of the period of about 460 B. C. The motive seems to have been inspired directly by nature—witness the supple bend of the back, the delicate arms, the naïve, though not too realistic, concentration of interest in the act portrayed. Few pieces of ancient sculpture have given rise to more discussion and extraordinary difference of opinion than this popular work. One school of archæologists[1459] believes it a late adaptation of a Hellenistic original, a more accurate copy being the one in the British Museum, and consequently views it as a purely genre statue impossible of conception before Alexander’s time. According to this view the London copy was an archaistic work of the time of Pasiteles. Another school, however, including Helbig, Wolters, Kekulé, and many others, sees in the Roman statue an original work of 460 to 450 B. C., chiefly because the face shows great similarity to those of the statues of the Olympia gables (especially to that of Apollo)[1460]. According to this view the statue can not have been a genre work, as such works of decorative character were of later origin, but the motive must be sought in some definite incident—in some myth or historical event. Thus it has been referred to the colonization of the Ozolian Lokroi, whose ancestor Lokros is said to have got a thorn in his foot and to have founded cities near where this occurred in fulfilment of an oracle. Many others, on the other hand, have seen in its motive that of a boy victor in running, who has gained his victory despite a thorn, which he is now pulling out, and who has dedicated his statue to commemorate both the victory and the untoward circumstances under which it was won. It has been assigned to various sculptors and schools—to Myron, Pythagoras, and Kalamis, and to Peloponnesian, Bœotian, and even Sicilian art.[1461] The boy’s absorption in his task certainly reminds us of the concentration so characteristic of the Diskobolos of Myron. In determining its age and artistic affiliations several things must be considered. In the first place, the Roman statue is a copy, as the rock on which the boy sits is cast with the figure, which would have been impossible in the fifth century B. C. The long hair on this copy, which is short on the one in the British Museum, falls down the neck, but not over the cheeks, as it should on a head which is thus bent downwards. Pasiteles almost certainly would have tied it with a ribbon. This shows that the original was the work of an artist who was used to making standing statues, and was not aware of the change in the representation of the hair brought about by drooping ones. Such considerations, in conjunction with the archaic facial characteristics, almost certainly refer the original work to the fifth century B. C., a date when genre statues, produced for adornment, did not exist. Consequently a definite incident must be represented by it, and it is quite possible that this incident should be sought in athletic sculpture in the representation of a boy runner.
The Thorn-puller became a model for many imitations from the beginning of Hellenistic times on. These imitations tended to greater realism and consequently to the debasement of the original conception, for they were made to represent peasants, shepherds, satyrs, and even negroes. The motif was also transferred to figures of girls, as, e. g., in the fragment of a terra-cotta statuette found in 1912 at Nida-Haddernheim.[1462] In the early Empire it was frequently copied in marble, and again, during the Renaissance, the motive was used for small bronzes.[1463] Of Hellenistic copies, showing how the motive deteriorated, we shall mention only two: the marble one found on the Esquiline, in 1874, and known as the Castellani copy, now in the British Museum,[1464] the sculptor of which has made it into a truly genre fountain figure by transforming the noble features of the beautiful Greek runner into the snub nose and thick lips of a street Arab, and the still later bronze statuette found near Sparta and now in the Paris collection of Baron Edmund de Rothschild,[1465] which represents the boy extracting the thorn in anger.
Similarly the so-called Sandal-binder—with replicas in Paris (Fig. [8]), London, Athens, Munich, and elsewhere, has been looked upon, without decisive grounds, to be sure, as a runner who is tying on his sandals after the race.[1466] We have already discussed this statue in Chapter II, in connection with the subject of assimilation.